Installation problems

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

I'm having a blonde moment.

My development machine at work is on the network but I don't log on the the domain so I'm not directly affected by group policy etc. There are no restrictive security settings on it. I set it up myself and it's pretty much XP Pro out of the box.

Just recently I've found that I can't install anything on it, unless I do it in safe mode. Never used to be like that, and nobody else uses it. The installers will run and stick right at the end untill they stop responding. So I have to install everything in safe mode.

I've also downloaded some windows updates which are waiting to install, but same problem. Every time I shut down they try and install and I end up having to shut down manually.

How do I install updates that have been downloaded in safe mode? The install updates icon doesn't appear in the task bar in safe mode.

I'm sure this is really obvious, but I've got a bad head and can't concentrate...

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Could it be a local computer policy that's changed?

 

Boot up in 'safe mode with networking'

If the taskbar icon still dont show then go to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com to trigger the session off again.

Neall

 

How long has this problem bee going on for?

If you can pin point a time then you may be able to use System Restore.

 

Sounds like another application is preventing you installing anything. Have you tried a selective start up (msconfig)?

If it works in safe mode the OS itself must be okay. Have you tried ending non essential running processes to try and narrow down the problem?

As with all oddities, you should run a full AV scan and malware scan too. Malware can cause all sorts of strange issues.

 

All good points, thanks guys.

Hard to pin a time frame to it as we don't install stuff very often. I suspect it's over zealous AV. Symmantec AV is a bit of a swine as auto-protect keeps re-enabling itself when you try and install stuff.

Where's my hammer...

 

Tried that. Windows update fails when in safe mode.
I googled the error message and it seems to be a common problem which has to do with a service which doesn't run in safe mode but is required by update.

 

As the mighty Tripwire45 says, Google is your friend